Khan-do golfer tames tough Mongolian course

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On top of the world: Andre Tolme swings into action during the 35-year-old American's golfing odyssey across Mongolia. Photo: AP

Andre Tolme has just finished a round with an eagle on the 18th hole. But his score was 506.

That's because Tolme's course is the entire length of Mongolia, where each "hole" is up to 179,000 metres. After nine months of traversing the Mongolian steppe with nothing but a four-wheel drive, a tent and a 3-iron, Tolme has completed his golf journey across the land once ruled by Genghis Khan.

Tolme, 35, is an American civil engineer. Dividing the Mongolian countryside into 18 holes, he has completed an expedition of 1985km - a course he estimated with a par of 11,880. His final scorecard was 290 over par - and 509 lost balls.

"It was a pretty exhausting round of golf," Tolme said from Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, on Monday.

Tolme slept in a tent along the way and had a caddie, Khatanbaatar, who drove and supplied water. He fended off bubonic plague-carrying marmots, constant heat and 64kmh gusts of wind that, fittingly, "never blow from behind you".

While Tiger Woods might complain of camera shutters going off during his backswing, Tolme encountered slightly different distractions: "The sound of howling wolves is a little unsettling," he said. Why did he do this? "Because I wanted to," the adventure-golfer said.

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But he does have other reasons in mind: to raise awareness of Mongolia, to pioneer the sport of "extreme golf" and to "expand the artistic imagination".

Tolme, due to return to the US soon, plans to take it easy, write a book about his experience and search for another suitable landscape to golf across.